Today's guilt trip

I finally just got around to sending off thank you letters to my grandmothers. It's only been a month since Christmas. Damn laziness strikes again.
So anyway, I'm writing these notes on some sweet stationery Jeremy got me a long time ago and thinking to myself how happy I would be to find this cute little envelope in my mail box. And then I immediately felt guilty that I don't send them letters more often. It must be pretty lonely being an elderly widow, as they both are. They both live in retirement communities, but I know that at least one of them wasn't that happy to move there. And just because you are surrounded by your peers doesn't mean that you have lots of friends. With all the other problems that getting older brings, I imagine loneliness to be the worst.
Alas, I am a solid 10 and a half hour drive away from them and the occasional letter or phone call is generally the best I can do. That's why, despite how hard I know it is for her, I'm a smidgen jealous of my friend Christine who cares for her 95 year old grandmother 4 days a week. Frankly, most of the time, it sounds terrible. But she does have the satisfaction of knowing how much it means to her grandmother to have her granddaughter and great granddaughter with her. My grandmothers will be 93 and 87 this June, so who knows how much more time I'll have with them. But at least I will be visiting them this March, which will be almost 2 years since I last saw them. They are both sweet, funny old ladies and I'm glad to call them Grandma.